Ever had a site you just don't care if people comment or maybe you just don't want comments open if it's subject that's going to get people hot headed and opinionated about some posts. Well, you control that part here.

Allow people to comment on new articles. Deselect that box and your comments will be closed site wide.

You can customize this to suit yourself. If you want your comments only to be open for a week just select the number of days from the

“Automatically close comments on articles older that X days”

I don't change it but I reckon that's where you customize things should you want more control over the comments. I haven't a site that is quite big but for those going after huge traffic you might want to control that part so you aren't spending all your time monitoring comments.

The email you can set it to notify you when a comment is submitted. I use a redirect for mine. When you create your email in WA hosting you can select redirect and put whichever email you want to get your messages sent to. This is just the same a domain redirect. It will look like admin @ domain but it will arrive at your email in box.

Makes for faster response if you reply to the comments. Which I do. Makes it a bit more conversational type of site. Google seems to like that.

Make sure you keep administrator must always approve the comment. You don't want people abusing your site. If you get negative comments you can either post them as is, or edit them slightly if there's inappropriate language and then post your reply.